For one Aurora immigrant, there’s work to be done, taxes to be paid

It’s a muggy end-of-summer day in a rural neighborhood in Broomfield.

Lugo Garcia, 49, is waiting with his co-worker Mario to start concrete landscaping around the edges of a two-acre McMansion.

“We did some flagstone,” Garcia, cheerful and wearing a Walt Disney World T-shirt, says as he points to small rocks and large sandstone that have been meticulously arranged in front of the villa-style home of the same color.

Garcia says he is a subcontractor on this project. He anticipates that he will be able to split around $4,000 between himself, Mario and another worker when the job is finished in two weeks. 

That’s if the man with the concrete ever shows up.

“It happens,” says Garcia, referring to how often someone just doesn’t show up. Garcia is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico City. He says these days he doesn’t mind when some jobs fall through because Colorado’s booming economy means there’s lots of work.

“Everybody pays me, everybody’s happy, everybody has money. I have another flagstone job that will take two days. Then I need to do some retaining wall for one day. We’re always busy,” he says.  As an undocumented worker, Garcia often has to rely on the kindness of strangers.

“I put my money up front, and they pay me later,” he says of the odd construction jobs he performs throughout the week.  “Sometimes they write a contract, sometimes not. I’m just trusting people.”

Garcia, who has lived in the United States for 16 years, has owned a stucco and stone company for 12 of them.

He is paid for work under his company name and even pays taxes because his business is a limited liability company.  “I have my employee identification number and my taxpayer number,” he explains.

Garcia is not alone in being undocumented but still paying taxes. According to a 50-state analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released earlier this year, 8.1 million of 11.4 million undocumented immigrants who work paid more than $11.8 billion in state and local taxes in 2012, even while they were living illegally in the country.

Garcia likes to poke fun at fellow worker Mario Corral, who is almost 20 years younger. Garcia says Corral is handsome and often wins the affections of women he meets on the job.

Corral blushes. He says has a wife and two children who are living in Durango, Mexico. He has been commuting back and forth between Mexico and Colorado for the past 10 years while trying to get his family a tourist visa. 

Garcia has it easier. His wife and children have lived with him in Aurora for most of his time here. He has two boys now, both in their twenties.

Garcia says he is too old now to return to Mexico.

“We have been living here so long. It would be hard to get good jobs in Mexico,” he says.  “We’re following the American dream, but I don’t think I’m living the American dream.”

Garcia says he doubts that he will ever be able to become a citizen.

House Republicans are embracing a step-by-step approach to immigration, in contrast to the sweeping plan passed by the Senate and backed by the White House. But they’re offering neither specifics nor a timetable — nor any mention of possible citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country unlawfully.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is drawing larger crowds as he continues to criticize immigration policies in stark language that has revealed a deep divide between immigration hawks and moderates who are trying to avoid alienating Hispanic voters.

Trump’s descriptions of Mexican immigrants bringing drugs and crime to the U.S. and being rapists have been roundly denounced as offensive. But his message about the broken border has resonated with many in the GOP, especially after an immigrant who was deported multiple times was accused of killing a woman on a San Francisco pier.

“We’re not really scared,” Garcia says of the potential for trump to win the GOP presidential nomination.  “We’re sure he’s not going to be president. Hispanic people are not going to vote for him.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.